The Children(2)

“Had the mom character actually died? Like, if the final book had come out, what would have—” She checked herself. “Sorry, people must ask you about the sixth book constantly. I even wrote a letter to Edith Sharpe once, asking when she was gonna write it. I was a kid and didn’t know yet that she was . . .”

She pressed her lips together, looking down. Like it might shock or offend Guin, twenty-one years on, to hear that her mother was dead. Guin laid a hand on hers and said, “How old were you when you lost your mom?”

The girl’s lined eyes narrowed. “How did you—”

“Fellow traveler. I was eleven.”

Alison nodded slowly. “Sixteen.”

She was going to say something else, but a harried-looking production assistant popped his head in. “Guinevere, you look great. You need water? Coffee? I’ll be back to bring you to Samantha in ten.”

He disappeared before Guin could respond. Alison shook her head and said, “He’s like a broken light. Always bzzt.” She shook like she was having a tiny seizure, then set about tinting Guin’s lips the brown of a bad apple.

When she was done Guin stood, smiling. “It was lovely chatting with you,” she said, wrapping Alison in what was meant to be a quick hug. But the makeup artist melted into her, rings biting her ribs. After a moment Guin put a second arm around her back.

They stood there, swaying. “Thank god, though, for my sister.” Alison spoke into her neck. “It helps, right? Not to have to lose someone alone.”

Guin had an unhelpful urge: to laugh. She nodded instead. “It really does.”

“Shit.” Alison spoke in a choked voice, pulling back. Head tipped up like she had a nosebleed, she said, “It was so good to meet you. I can’t cry, though. I’ll wreck my liner.”

When Alison was gone Guin let her face go slack. Thank god, though, for my sister. The desire to laugh was gone now. She breathed out slowly, thinking about what the girl had said, about her favorite Ninth City scene. She could picture it: Book Guinevere watching a movie at the Mortal Cinema, where only the dead perform. Heart dropping as her mother walked onto its screen.

The scene didn’t exist. Or it did, but nothing played out the way Alison recalled it. This happened more often than you’d think, readers misremembering plots, inserting new scenes, revealing things about themselves with these false memories. The Ninth City series as magic mirror. Guin never corrected them. She nodded and said, I remember that part. I loved it, too.

Her coffee was cooling next to Alison’s makeup kit. She took a sip and checked her face. It looked like her own but more plasticky, subtly frosted. She was turning it from side to side when the man in the corner said, “Don’t mind me.”

Guin whipped around. “God. I didn’t see you.”

“I know. I came in when you were getting . . .” He waved a hand over his face. “Spackled.”

He was a white man in his early forties, hair receding in deep grooves above each temple. It made him look sharky, like an old-timey gangster.

“Guinevere Sharpe.” He drew it out, slow and mocking. “As I live and breathe.”

They’d never met. She was good with faces, she’d remember his. Hard joviality atop an acre of entitled discontent.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Pete.” He stuck out a hand and leaned forward so the book in his lap canted upward. In matte black caps it said intimations: a novel. In print of equal size: peter lundell. Guin recognized its cover from the subway ads.

She held her own hand out but didn’t step forward. He leaned, leaned, finally rose and crab-walked toward her in a folded V to shake. When he sat back down his face was flushed.

“This shtick you’ve got going,” he said, “the whole saintly girl heroine thing. I’m sure it’s lucrative, but doesn’t it get old? You’ve got to be thirty, at least. I bet you get home and just start smashing shit.”

“You’ve got something hanging out of your nose,” Guin said.

His hand flew to his face, felt around. Nothing. “Oh, that’s cute.” He pointed at her. “You almost got me.”

“I fully got you.”

“A little childish, no? I suppose that’s your brand.” He leaned back, steepled his hands, made a show of enjoying himself. “So. Here to shill the ol’ memoir.”

She nodded. “And you’re here to shill the ol’ novel.”

“Well, I did write it.” He gave her a professorial smile. “How about you? Did you give it a go one long afternoon, or did you head straight to ghostwriter?”

The back of her skull began to heat. A little yarmulke of rage, easy to compartmentalize. And it wasn’t like he was wrong. “Straight to ghostwriter.”

“I never liked those books. The Ninth City books.” People loved to startle her with this reveal, each believing they were the first to dare. “My sister, though, what a fan. Total horse girl, never had a single date. She hung that photo of you and your brother on her wall, you know the one. To be honest, it all seems a little . . .” He fake winced. “Predatorial, in hindsight.”

Guin did know the photo he meant, and nodded. “I read your review in the Times the other day. What did it say?” She pretended to think. “The word was subservient, wasn’t it? To your influences? And derivative, if I’m remembering right. I bet, after reading that, you just started smashing shit.”